Baking Fail: How NOT to Make Mousse

I've made a lot of mistakes on this baking adventure but not so much where I sacrificed 50 cupcakes...

I was so excited to make chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chip mousse filling for a birthday party and thought I had it in the bag. I had my heavy cream, some powdered sugar and I used mostly hot chocolate packets to sweeten and give it a hint of milk chocolate flavor. Who doesn't love hot chocolate?

It came out beautiful. I had a huge geek moment. After all, not many people get excited over the fluffiness of homemade mousse. I was proud!

The picture doesn't really do it justice, but you get the point. 

I couldn't just leave it at that. Nope, I had to be gutsy which in turn became my downfall. I chopped up milk chocolate and white chocolate chips that I wanted to add to it. Well, they're kind of heavy and I got a little overboard and while it still tasted delicious, it flattened the mousse. And my spirit. 

It became a soupy mess and I was more upset than I should of been but hey, now I know. Ease up on the chips and fold them in instead of tossing them into the mixer. 

I tried baking them in the center anyway and it was a complete disaster and I had to start all over. I couldn't bare to serve them like that. 

So now we know and I thought I'd spread the word on how NOT to go about experimenting with mousse and you're welcome. :) Although I still highly recommend using hot chocolate packets. 

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Talk about Throw Back Thursday

I was sifting through some old Facebook photos from college and found a gem.

I went to an art school for a reason. I'm not one for math and science but I still had to take those classes. In order to get out of getting frustrated and going in to detail on science projects, I turned them into cake.

I give you the "Hurricake." Complete with headless gingerbread men.

If there's one thing that my "Natural Disasters" class taught me is that when in doubt, make food for a final project. It always goes over well. People (by people I mean professors) tend to forget that you don't know what you're talking about and are blinded by your baked goods.

We had to show the five stages of a hurricane so I went out and found gingerbread man cookies, sprinkles, tree sprinkles and I think at one point I even threw a Matchbox car in there for some drama.

I couldn't tell you now the in depth descriptions in each category of a hurricane, but maybe you can from the cake carnage I created?

Category 1:

Category 2: I'm assuming the roof of the gingerbread house came off while the gingerbread man was sleeping.

Category 3: Now his arm fell off.

Category 4: You've lost your head and now the house is flooding. 

Category 5: Let's jus stay I don't want to be in that house. 

I must give myself some credit for creativity, making the hurricane out of funfetti representing whatever a hurricane destroys and scoops up in it's path.  

And all the gingerbread man sprinkles to show death. Kind of sick once you look back on it. But hey, had to pass a class and I like cake! 

Mixing up Evil, circa 2007. Complete with Starbucks apron and espresso wall art, still in existence. Special thanks to my roommates for putting up with this. 

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